In praise of plastic soldiers?

 Let your mind go back, back into the past, if you will.  To a simpler time when teenage boys could buy a box of Airfix soldiers for mere pennies.  Most toy shops sold them so they were easily available and there was a good selection of mostly well sculpted troops.  The down side was that they were moulded in a soft plastic and paint had a habit of flaking off thin parts.  At the same time though in their model kits Airfix used a harder but more brittle plastic.  Some of these included crew figures for things like artillery or the Bloodhound missile set.  These held paint without any issues as they didn't flex.

Mid 1970's box art I go back much further to the ones with the cellophane!

Now the mists of time gather again and a few years roll by.  It's now the early1970's Airfix figures are still available but metal wargaming figures are more readily available courtesy of Hinchcliffe and Minifigs.  The choice of periods is far greater than those old favourites from Airfix but the cost is far greater as a penniless teenager can just by the figures they want in small numbers.  This allows entire units to be fielded (eventually when funds allow) all in a single pose.  They paint well and apart from wonky spears (unless using Hinchcliffe with wire spears) look great.  It was at about this time that a young Elenderil looked at the hard plastic Airfix kit figures and wondered why no one made a range of wargaming figures in a similar material.

Fast forward past the intervening years of my life and here we are in 2022, fifty some years later and plastic wargaming figures are all the rage.  Multipart figures in hard plastic and now the Plastic Soldier Company are releasing the Corvus Belli 15mm ranges in something called ultracast plastic.  This seems to be more akin to the old Airfix style soft plastic but apparently takes paint OK.  

Oh how the younger me would have loved that.  Good quality plastic soldiers covering a wide range of historical periods.  And yet there is a doubt in my mind.  Aren't we meant to be reducing our reliance on plastics?  It is turning up in the strangest places micro plastics in the oceans and apparently in human blood samples!  Maybe teenage Elenderil would have welcomed these but pensioner Elenderil isn't quite so sure.